A new international agreement is
needed to police the exploitation of the deep ocean because of the rising
threats of deep-sea mining and bottom trawling for fish, say scientists. Speakers
at a symposium this month (16 February) urged the UN to negotiate a new treaty
for the deep ocean to supplement the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

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The symposium took place at the
annual meeting of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of
Science) in Chicago, United States.

"This is an opportunity for
scientists to voice their concerns about mounting human impacts on the
once-remote deep ocean to those who have the power in their hands to make the
changes," says Kristina Gjerde, high seas policy advisor for the International
Union for Conservation of Nature.

The deep sea makes up about
two-thirds of the world’s oceans. It begins at a depth of around 200 meters,
both within and beyond zones of national jurisdiction.

But "imminent" mining and bottom
trawling for fish threaten deep-sea environments, said the scientists at the
meeting.

"We're calling for a new treaty to
sew the gaps in international law that don’t currently include biodiversity,
conservation, marine genetic resources, capacity development and technology transfer for areas beyond national jurisdiction," says Gjerde.

The UN-sanctioned International Seabed Authority (ISA) was
established in 1994 to regulate mineral extraction from the deep seabed outside
national zones of jurisdiction. The ISA, based in Jamaica, has so far approved
19 mineral prospecting licenses in the deep ocean around the world for
companies and government bodies, including China and India, as well as those
sponsored by the Pacific island nations of Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga [See map].
The Cook Islands have also applied to explore deep-sea mining opportunities.

But the ISA does not regulate marine
genetic resources, which could be valuable to the medical and pharmaceutical
sectors, or biodiversity conservation, says Lisa Levin, director of the Center
for Marine Biodiversity & Conservation at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, United States.

"The problem is that the ISA's mandate is to facilitate
the extraction of minerals. They don't have a mandate to identify which parts
of the sea floor are most critical to ecosystem health in the ocean," says
Linwood Pendleton, senior scholar in the Ocean and Coastal Policy Program at
Duke University, United States.

The new treaty would ensure that
financial gains made from marine genetic resources are shared between all
nations, and that new mechanisms are developed to transfer marine technology
and develop capacity in this field, says Gjerde.